Creating a Campus-Wide Information Literacy Agenda

Information literacy stands beside critical thinking and oral and written communication as fundamental proficiencies required for academic, professional, and personal success. These lifelong learning abilities overlap and intersect in many ways and far beyond library communities. Higher education associations, regional and disciplinary accreditation bodies, and even employers are demanding evidence that students graduate with these skills. Yet colleges and universities struggle with articulating the desired learning outcome in specific ways that align with assessment practices and the collection of evidence of student achievement. Engaging faculty in rethinking curriculum beyond their courses, and even beyond their major, to create a coherent pathway for students to develop and reinforce these skills, is one of the greatest challenges in curriculum conversations. Libraries can help. But we need to be clear on our own role, sensitive to our unique campus cultures, and opportunistic about ways we can identify the unique strategic hooks for our own institutions in order to help advance the conversations and ensure the libraries place at the center of student learning